Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All- Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War by Chris Lamb (review)

During any given summer, all across America, sounds of baseball can be heard. In 2023, much like 1995, or even 1955, kids are heard riding their bikes and laughing as they make their way to their local school yards, sandlots, or backyards. Bats are held tightly against their shoulders, gloves hanging from bicycle handlebars. Those without bikes often stood on the pegs of the back wheels, getting a free ride from a buddy (usually without helmets . . . gasp)! Some of the kids wore regular tees, while others wore jerseys of Ruth, Griffey, or Trout. The final group wore jerseys (on loan) from their local baseball teams, usually Little League teams. Who doesn’t remember wearing those polyester jerseys on a ninety- degree day, stirrups pulled up and hats pulled down tightly? The official patch on the sleeve of the Little League jersey included a blue baseball field, red lettering, with a white background. Conversely, other leagues, specifically the Dixie Baseball League in the southern states, added a touch of the Confederacy to their jersey patches. Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War is an unsettling and true story about childhood, baseball, and bigotry in the worst sense of the word. Lamb, who did not play baseball in the south, describes the struggles and challenges for kids and adults who grew up living and playing youth baseball in segregated South Carolina. He also describes in detail how the color of kids’ jerseys, hats, and stirrups wasn’t nearly as important as their skin color.

Lamb’s book focuses on the year 1955 for several reasons, not all of which are positive. Rosa Parks had refused to move to the back of a public bus and was arrested for her act of bravery. The United States government was in a battle over “separate but equal,” as senators such as Strom Thurmond and Douglas Abrams wrote, “The image of African American boys sharing the same baseball field as white boys was no less acceptable than black children attending schools with white children” (7). How far did these segregated attitudes run? In Lamb’s book, hatred based on racial differences runs all the way to the Little League fields in the southern states, with Charleston, South Carolina, being ground zero.

Tackling a subject such as race is no easy task. Readers are familiar with the history of the Civil War, Jim Crow, and Emmett Till. But few people would expect the anger, bigotry, and pure hatred to be shown when an eleven- and twelve-year-old Black Little League All- Star team from South Carolina simply wanted to play baseball in the state tournament. The problem was that no white teams would play the Cannon Street All- Stars Little League team during the state tournament. Every white team forfeited their games against the team. The Cannon Street team won the state tournament without playing a single game. Little League officials were then left with a major decision, with implications running through both the northern and southern states.

The story of the 1955 Cannon Street All- Stars, as Lamb writes, would have “remained buried” if not for a man named Augustus Holt (10). In 1993 Holt’s son, Lawrence, made the All- Star team in the Dixie Youth Baseball League. The Dixie League began in 1955 when white baseball teams refused to play Black teams. Lamb continues his narrative by describing how Holt, an African American and father of All- Star Lawrence, noticed a Confederate flag on the sleeve of his son’s uniform. This was 1993, not 1863! Augustus was furious, as Lamb describes, and his anger switched to curiosity. As he researched the issue he found that southerners didn’t want their white children playing against Black kids in baseball. Hence according to Lamb, the beginning of the Dixie Youth Baseball...